On The Plains We Traced The
Rivers By Their Fringe Of Cottonwoods To The Distant Platte, And
Between Us And
Them lay glories of mountain, canyon, and lake,
sleeping in depths of blue and purple most ravishing to the eye.
As we crept from the ledge round a horn of rock I beheld what
made me perfectly sick and dizzy to look at - the terminal Peak
itself - a smooth, cracked face or wall of pink granite, as nearly
perpendicular as anything could well be up which it was possible
to climb, well deserving the name of the "American
Matterhorn.[14]
[14] Let no practical mountaineer be allured by my description
into the ascent of Long's Peak. Truly terrible as it was to me,
to a member of the Alpine Club it would not be a feat worth
performing.
SCALING, not climbing, is the correct term for this last ascent.
It took one hour to accomplish 500 feet, pausing for breath every
minute or two. The only foothold was in narrow cracks or on
minute projections on the granite. To get a toe in these cracks,
or here and there on a scarcely obvious projection, while
crawling on hands and knees, all the while tortured with thirst
and gasping and struggling for breath, this was the climb; but at
last the Peak was won. A grand, well-defined mountain top it is,
a nearly level acre of boulders, with precipitous sides all
round, the one we came up being the only accessible one.
It was not possible to remain long.
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